2017 Movies We’re Looking Forward To

Other than the big tentpole franchises — Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars, Justice League, Alien, and another motherfucking goddamn Transformers movie, for fucking fuck’s sake — and reboots — Friday the 13th, Power Rangers, The Ring, Saw, and King Kong — we don’t know a lot about the movies being released next year. Indeed, 2017’s best movie is probably still under wraps — nobody knew about Lemonade this time last year — but there are still some to start getting excited about.

Baby Driver

That this will only be Edgar Wright’s fourth film since his 2004 breakthrough Shaun of the Dead, and his second since the 2010 masterpiece Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, further demonstrates that there’s no justice in the world. But this heist comedy is also Wright’s first original solo script, and he’s scored Kevin Spacey, Jamie Foxx, and perhaps most importantly, Jon Hamm. It may be too much to hope that this begins a long and fruitful collaboration between Wright and Hamm, but anything is possible.

Dunkirk

Seemingly pivoting away from the mind-bendiness of his last two non-Batman pictures — Interstellar and Inception — Christopher Nolan’s new movie is set during the evacuation of Dunkirk. He shot the film in 70mm and IMAX, and while Nolan would probably shoot My Dinner With Andre in 70mm if he could, the subject and the presentation make Dunkirk feel like a throwback to past widescreen World War II epics such as The Longest Day and Patton — though it’s likely to be far more watchable. (Those two don’t hold up well. Just sayin’.)

My Little Pony: The Movie

Featuring the characters from the Friendship Is Magic television series, Hasbro has implied that this will be the first My Little Pony theatrical film — which isn’t true even if you disqualify the undervalued Equestria Girls movies. Heck, it isn’t even the first movie with this title, as the 1986 My Little Pony: The Movie will attest. But it is the first Pony film intended to appeal to a wide audience, and Magic‘s secret weapon, Rebecca Dart, is the art director, so if nothing else, it’ll be pure eye candy.

T2: Trainspotting

What looks at first like a panicked retreat to the familiar territory of his 1996 breakthrough after the financial underperformance of Trance and Steve Jobs is in fact something Danny Boyle has been talking about since the headier Slumdog Millionaire days. Loosely based on Porno, novelist Irvine Welsh’s sequel to his original Trainspotting, Boyle has retained all his original cast to see how Renton, Spud, and the others are doing two decades later. Here’s hoping none of them has reproduced.